Cormaic's Garden - Plants

Garden Layout - Plants - Jasmine

Jasminium nudiflorum, the winter jasmine, is another of that first batch of plants brought into the garden. Along with the Cotoneaster horizontalis, it has been planted at the foot of the soil stack that serves the bathroom, and encouraged to hide that monstroosity with its foliage. In fact, it is so vigourous, it has spread around the corner of the house all the way to the kitchen window, a distance of 4m, and reaches a maximum height of approximately 3m.

From the first frost through to mid-spring, this plant is covered in bright yellow flowers, and, it seems to me, the harder the frost, the more flowers this plant puts out. It is said to be deciduous, but it never loses all of its leaves, although it does become somewhat bare in mid-winter, but this is amply compensated by the appearance of the 30mm diameter flowers.

It is not clinging or self-supporting, and therefore has to be held in place by some means. I use wire ties affixed to cable clips hammered into the masonry. It droops tyowards the ground, and wherever a shoot touches the ground, even the 3mm sand joint between the paving bricks, it roots itself, establishing a clone of itself that can be jiggled out, severed from the parent plant and potted up after one season.

Jasmine nudiflorum

It needs pruning back each spring, after flowering has finished, to cut out dead wood and the dried leaders that held the flowers, but other than that, it's a self-maintaining no-fuss sort of plant that every garden should have for that essential splash of winter colour.

There is also a cutting of the white variety, Jasmine officianale, in a pot on the patio. It's only 300mm high at the moment and is awaiting a final position in the garden.